How Do Civil Sexual Abuse Claims Work in DC?

Personal injury attorney John Yannone discusses sex abuse claims and how they are different from other kinds of personal injury claims.

How Do Sex Abuse Cases Fit Within The Realm of Personal Injury Law?

Personal injury law is an umbrella title that includes all sorts of personal injury cases. Largely, personal injury cases are those who have fallen victim to someone else’s negligence and been injured. Certainly sexual assault and abuse cases, such as the Catholic Church priest scandal or the Boy Scout scandal, where victims have been abused by figures in a superior position to them who take advantage both of their victim’s youth and inexperience and of their own authority position, are cases which fall under the personal injury umbrella.

What Does it Mean to File a Sexual Abuse Claim?

Like all personal injury cases, you are filing a civil claim or suit for monetary damages for what harms and losses have been suffered at the hands of someone’s negligence. In most of these sex abuse cases the damages are psychological in nature. Many times, the victims are diagnosed with PTSD, depression, and anxiety as a result of the abuse, and so the suffering caused by those psychological problems, as well as the treatment associated with them, which can be lengthy, forms the basis for the compensation for damages.

What Makes Sex Abuse Claims Cases Unique?

Often, just like in a criminal sex abuse case, the victim can be subjected to some heavy-handedness by the defense because the stakes are very high in these cases. The type of treatment, being psychological, is very personal in nature. When you are pursuing one of these cases on behalf of someone that suffered sexual abuse and they’ve been traumatized and are getting psychological and psychiatric treatment, there are those treatment records documenting a lot of problems that someone is having, which is very personal. But by the very nature of the type of case it is, the psychological trauma that is the basis for the damages sought puts the victim’s psychological and psychiatric treatment in issue. So, therefore, they become an open book, and those psychological and psychiatric records must be shared with others in the case, although they can be protected by a court order so they aren’t used in any way outside of the case. But in some instances, that information is so personal that the victim feels even more victimized just by having to disclose it.

The type of damages are somewhat unique in and of themselves, being psychological as opposed to more physical, and then with the defense tactics of attacking the victim’s credibility, questioning whether the incident happened at all, all of it makes those cases somewhat unique.

How Does Someone Prepare For The Process in a Sex Abuse Claim?

First of all there has to be a commitment by the victim to want to withstand the litigation process. There are instances where one can try to get the case resolved prior to filing suit by way of settlement or mediation, but the other side could fight the case, and every case is dependent upon its own facts. So the question becomes, how strong is the proof that it actually occurred? And this is actually another unique thing about sex abuse cases: many times, victims do not come forward immediately when it occurs, and, in many instances, substantial time can go by.

So there will have been no forensic examination of evidence to corroborate that the abuse occurred which opens the door for the defense to challenge whether in fact it did occur at all.

Again, each case being individual, the question is how strong is the evidence that it did occur, and , as a result, how easily can liability be established. If liability is an issue, then the question is how best to proceed, and whether mediation is going to work out or whether the case is going to have to go through the litigation process.